


Only Silence and Some Secondhand Clothes

by lynndyre



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade is no longer a Colonel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Silence and Some Secondhand Clothes

Jade was no longer a Colonel, no longer a Balfour. No longer a Curtiss. With his hair cut short, his uniform abandoned years past as an artifact of a dead regime, it was a simple matter to pass as a scientist on leave from Belkand. Guy's accent spilled easily from his tongue, close enough to Baticul as to sound nearly native.

His eyes were the only thing about him that was not nondescript, but the tinted glass of his spectacles was shield enough for that. He was not a man anyone was looking for. And when he died, the fonic glyphs applied to his corneas would fade, and they would be merely brown again.

Passports were useless now, even had Jade still possessed one. Kimlasca's border checkpoints existed not to regulate trade and traffic, but to prevent all escape from the wasteland Malkuth had become. Instead Jade passed through the shadowed, sandswept alleys of Chesedonia. Its desert climate had spared it the spread of Malkuth's contagion, but half the city was still deserted. Without trade, soon Chesedonia would vanish back into the sand.

Beyond the desert, Kimlasca's soil was rich, fertile. The land was green, the people happy. There was no longer any threat of war, for there was no longer an enemy. As strictly as the border crossings were controlled, entry to the capital itself was barely regulated. Jade opened his satchel, allowed the knights to look through the scraps of fontech he'd collected in Chesedonia, through the normal traveler's supplies of gels and bottles. It would have required a far sharper eye and a magnifying lens to detect the single life bottle whose wax sealant had been remelted.

The grey stone and wood of Baticul's lower levels were clean, the boarding house where Jade found a bed was painted a pale, cheerful yellow. Jade smiled at his new landlady, thanked her. Unpacking his things was a simple matter, required breaking only that single, tampered seal. He tipped the fluid out into his palm, and watched it merge with the fonons of his own body. Not a single drop touched the floor.

He breathed in the city, remembered the rush and sweat of the coliseum, the candlelit conversation of six people crowded into a single room. When he exhaled, his breath was that of Keterburg, dead and frozen, of Grand Chokmah's streets, refuse and bodies staining the white tile.

Breaking the fon slot seal had given him a deeper knowledge of his own body. Jade walked Baticul's marketplace end to end, with every fon slot of his body wide open. The diffusion was slow. Steady. Encompassing. He trailed his fingers through the upper level fountains, knowing that all the pipes would carry the water lower, to every level of the city.

It was a distant surprise to see her, simply walking among her people. In Malkuth the nobles had retreated within the walls of their estates and died there, in room after coloured room. But Natalia was the people's princess, and this was her city, and she had nothing to fear.

Jade ran a hand through his hair, so that it fell as his bangs once had across his forehead. Then he stepped into Natalia's line of sight, and removed his glasses.

It was a strange reunion. Without his uniform, she responded to him only as an old friend, not a former enemy. He lifted her hand to his lips, an out of character obeisance. She laughed. Let her attribute a teasing motive.

"I'm glad to see you well. You used to be a doctor, so you knew how to stay safe?" Her eyes were genuine. Worried. For him.

He smiled at her. "Of course."

"And... Guy?"

Jade shook his head, watched her expression falter, hand to her lips in sorrow. Uncharitably, he wondered if she were remembering a fontech-obsessed swordsman, or her fiancé's servant.

The citizens of Baticul pressed closer again, a thousand-fold call on her time, her attentions. Jade declined to follow. He ran two fingers along her jaw, tilted gently upwards to kiss her cheek in parting.

She would think him sentimental, until the symptoms began.

It was dusk when Jade returned to his small rented room, with its cheerful yellow walls. He sank down on the bed, slowly, careful in every movement of his body. Fever had begun with the afternoon, and the ache had spread now to each of his joints. He let his eyes close as he lay back, the rush of blood in his ears as constant as Grand Chokmah's waterfalls.

His loyalty had been to a man before a country, to bright smiles and hard fists and farm animal pets. To the blood that stained blue tilework purple. To a ghost who would have told him not to do this.

Once Jade would have given everything he was to preserve the world. To escape the doom of the Score Ion had read out with his two-year-old, dying, replicant voice. Now he had carried it out.

Jade folded his hands across his stomach, breathed through the thickness pooling in his lungs. He had left his glasses with their fonic-etched lenses in the street market, the contaminated life bottle in the garbage behind the inn. Unless Natalia viewed his body herself, he would be committed to ashes without a name. By a simple calculation, Jade doubted she would have enough time.

Fever rose higher, and he dreamed without sleeping, of blue halls, blue beads, blond hair. Chills came like Keterburg's snows, constant and familiar.

Brown fingers closed around Jade's hand, and he let them pull him forward into winter.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _The plague born thence shall become a new poison unto humanity killing all within its reach. Its spread shall mark the true end of Malkuth. Kimlasca shall enjoy decades of prosperity as the plague in Malkuth grows.
> 
> Ultimately, the plague shall be brought into Kimlasca by a single man.
> 
> _   
> 


End file.
